This anime-style journey to Middle Earth dials back on risk and charm to robustly tell a simple tale of good versus evil.
There’s something naggingly “not quite” about this retro-vibed piece of animated Tolkien arcana, an attempt to fill in some contextual gaps for the author’s celebrated later work while also straining to feel dramatic and relevant in its own right. One positive thing that must be said of Kenji Kamiyama’s The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is that, as a female-fronted Rings spin-off, it is superior in its simplicity and passion to the recent TV serial, The Rings of Power, almost mocking that show’s convoluted desire to plug into and enhance the expansive lore of this world.
Yet it is inferior to another work with which it shares much DNA (in story, tone and aesthetic), and that is Hayao Miyazaki’s 1984 opus, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, in which a warrior maiden princess must saddle the pressures of a war instigated by men in a world on the precipice of destruction. The animation style might be best described as faux-Ghibli, and while there are certainly a few shots, sequences and characters that look like they may have been plucked out of the Ghibliverse, there’s a certain finesse and fluidity that’s lacking – almost like it’s been taken out of the oven a tad too early, or there are a few extra frames that went astray.
Set some two centuries before the events that unfurl in the Peter Jackson films, it is the story of Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), a spirited, tomboyish minor royal of the Rohan region who is introduced attempting to tame a giant-sized bird of prey having galloped her horse to the top of a snow-capped mountain. Back home, her gruff papa, Helm Hammerhand, king of Rohan (Brian Cox), causes a bit of a diplomatic foul-up when resorting to a round of old school fisticuffs to settle a fairly mundane familial dispute. Under-estimating his own physical clout, he accidentally one-hits his opponent to death, courting the ire of the deceased’s son – emo tearaway Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), who at one point was a potential marriage match for Héra.
The incident is swept under the rug and Wulf is banished from the kingdom, but left to fester alone, he gathers his marbles and hatches a catastrophic, scorched-earth retribution plan to not only get back at the fast-fisted Helm, but also put an end to his entire bloodline. And, if possible, destroy all those over which he lorded. Following a fairly sedate set-up, the film leans into action/warfare mode pretty swiftly, and Kamiyama and his team do well to choreograph the battles and make sure an audience retains a certain level of geographical and spatial awareness.
The characters are certainly likable, and it’s easy to invest in the extremely binary good vs evil story, but it’s all a little too straight and risk averse, rarely opting to push the boat out with side-characters, subplots or even production design detail. The most interesting and unique character is Miranda Otto’s Éowyn (she reprises her role from the original trilogy), who has a single short scene to demonstrate her prowess with a little tiny shield. It’s predictably rousing, and Tolkien heads will probably enjoy many of the callbacks to the original trilogy, but as a film in its own right, it’s all a little overblown and unnecessary.
Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.
Published 10 Dec 2024
Looks like a creative and alternative solution to franchise expansion. Fun trailer too.
Some good stuff in there, especially Brian Cox’s voicework. But never really tips things over the edge.
Aggressively mid and safe. No where near a disaster, but not really canon-level stuff.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
